Quebec Public Security Minister Lise Theriault is in tears as she answers reporters' questions on Friday, at the legislature in Quebec City. Theriault said eight provincial police officers who allegedly sexually assaulted native women have been put on administrative leave.Jacques Boissinot, The Canadian Press / The Gazette

Police officers trading money and cocaine for sex, a missing persons case that collected dust for months, and allegations of wanton cruelty against vulnerable women.

These are what indigenous people say they have encountered first-hand in their dealings with the Surete du Quebec in the remote mining city of Val d’Or.

The allegations come from 12 aboriginal people, mostly women, from Algonquin communities around Val d’Or in northwestern Quebec, and they range from sexual to physical abuse.

They involve nine officers from the city’s SQ detachment, and though police and the province have been aware of the claims since May, no disciplinary action had been taken against the officers until Friday – a day after a Radio-Canada investigative report broadcast the allegations in vivid detail.

Before the report surfaced, Quebec’s Public Security Minister had said she was satisfied with the SQ’s response to the case. The provincial police force had handled it locally, then handed the file off to investigators from outside Val d’Or before transferring it to internal affairs.

But on Friday, with the full extent of the allegations known to thousands of Quebecers, Minister Lise Theriault quickly reversed her position. She announced that eight officers had been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation by the Montreal police (the ninth officer under investigation died earlier this year).

“I’m in shock,” Theriault said, in a tearful address to reporters. “There are facts in the report that were not all made known to police.”

In the damning media report, some women said they were sexually assaulted by officers, others claim to have been given money and drugs in exchange for sexual favours. Others claim their complaints to Quebec’s police ethics commissioner weren’t taken seriously.

The parents of one missing woman told reporters Friday there had been little effort by police to solve their daughter’s disappearance. There were also allegations of physical violence and what they said was the routine

practice of being driven kilometres outside of town in a police car and forced to walk back in the cold. In Saskatchewan, there have been several high-profile cases of this tactic resulting in aboriginal people freezing to death.

Quebec solidaire MNA Manon Masse said there should be civilian oversight of a probe in which police investigate officers from another force. She wasn’t satisfied with Theriault’s about-face, decrying the fact that it took five months for the officers to be taken off front line duty.

“I’m not surprised to see this; I must say it’s shocking to see it on television like that but I’m not surprised,” said Tanya Sirois, the director general of Quebec’s Native Friendship Centre network.

“Working with aboriginal people, it’s a small world, you hear stories, you hear rumours about what happens to these women, you see terrible poverty and abuse … But just because it’s not surprising doesn’t mean I’m not angry.”

Sirois said the core of the problem lies in the fact that when indigenous women leave their traditional territory to live in a city, they’re placed in a vulnerable situation where they regularly encounter racism.

“Some landlords won’t rent apartments to these women and some will flat out tell them it’s because they’re aboriginal,” said Sirois.

“You also see discrimination in the workplace, people whose job applications are thrown out, people who can’t find a safe place to live so they’re pushed into the margins. And once they’re in the margins, that’s when people, and sometimes people in a position of authority, prey on that vulnerability. They know (the women) won’t report them, they know the women don’t necessarily trust the system.

My fear is, if this happened in Val d’Or, it could be happening in other cities.” “As far as discrimination goes, it’s getting better, people here are learning to appreciate the cultural differences, but there’s still a ways to go,” said Tony Wawatie, the former president of Val d’Or’s native friendship centre.

David Kistabish, band council chief of the nearby Pikogan territory, said he was appalled by the media report.

“There needs to be action, for sure,” he said. “Of course there are good cops out there and I teach my children to respect them but this is just terrible.”

Michele Audette, the former president of the Native Women’s Association of Canada, said she cried when she first saw the Radio-Canada broadcast. “The courage of these women, to come forward, that shows incredible strength,” she said. “You hear about the women who came forward, years ago, and denounced the police to their ethics commissioner and nothing happened. How do you trust our institutions after that? There’s also fears of reprisals. I mean, what do you do when the people who are supposed to protect you become your abusers?”

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